Tropical Storm Edges Toward New York; Winds at 50 M.P.H.

Tropical Storm Henri edged northward with 50-m.p.h. winds Monday off the Eastern Seaboard, and forecasters said it was expected to brush the Delaware-New Jersey coasts on a course toward New York’s Long Island.

Hurricane Gloria, meanwhile, passed a string of Caribbean islands on a sweep across open sea north of Puerto Rico and posed no immediate threat to any land.

Gale warnings were posted Monday from Virginia Beach, Va., to Cape Cod, Mass., and 125 miles east of Norfolk, Va.

Hurricane Squalls

Tropical Storm Henri’s highest sustained winds of 50 m.p.h. were mostly east of its center, over open water, and squalls of hurricane strength, 74 m.p.h. and above, were generated even farther east.

The storm was moving north at 10 m.p.h. to 15 m.p.h. and was expected to continue that course, paralleling the Delaware and New Jersey coasts, the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables said.

“At that speed, it’ll be south of Long Island (today),” Gil Clark, a forecaster with the hurricane center, said, adding that it was not expected to gain strength before then.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s higher mountains made the transition from summer to fall Monday with a new accumulation of six inches of snow.

Four-Foot Drifts

Colorado’s Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in North America, was closed during the weekend by four-foot snowdrifts.

Scottsbluff, Neb., posted a low temperature of just 30 degrees as cold air moved southward, tying its record low for the date, set in 1894.

Tornadoes blew across south Alabama, wrecking more than a dozen homes, uprooting trees and slightly injuring at least four persons.